John McDonnell: I have sat through the debates all afternoon; I left the Chamber for only a short time. I hope that the House will forgive me if I intervene at this point, but my amendment was not reached. I think that that has now happened for about three days running, but never mind.
	The tragic irony for many of us is that there is a consensus across the main political parties that some of us do not share. That consensus is on the answer to the question: who is going to pay for this crisis? It appears from the consensual discussions that have taken place that the people who will pay for it are those who never contributed to it. It will not be the people who got the bonuses, or those who, through their reckless greed, brought the economy to a standstill and into crisis. Nor, to be frank, will it be the Government Ministers who, through their neglect and deregulation, allowed that to happen. As a result of this Bill, it will be ordinary working people who will lose their jobs.
	The level of cuts described in the  Financial Times interview yesterday involved a 17 per cent. cut across the board for Departments other than those covering health, schools and policing. On average, we can expect a 10 per cent. cut in jobs, which means 500,000 civil servants. The tragedy is that, in the very month in which the Government are announcing those cuts through this legislation, they are also bringing forward proposals to scrap the civil service compensation scheme, so the redundancy scheme will go as well. Large numbers of people will lose their jobs as a result of this economic crisis, which was not of their making. They will also lose the redundancy entitlements that they had been expecting and to which they signed up when they took their jobs in the public service.
	In addition, our communities will now be at risk of losing some of their essential services. We have already seen announcements in London this week about possible hospital closures. There was a lobby of Parliament today by Land Registry workers, 1,700 of whom are to be sacked, and 1,500 jobs are to go at Network Rail, which will put public safety at risk. This is all because there is consensus in this House that ordinary working-class people will pay for this crisis.
	Some of us think that there is an alternative. Yes, it would involve cutting some public services, but it is also about scrapping Trident and ID cards, and about getting rid of the waste of resources involved in privatisation and getting rid of all the consultants, on whom we spend hundreds of millions: £400 million alone was spent on the private finance initiative on the London underground. It is also about re-introducing a fair taxation system that would tackle all the avoidance and evasion and ensure that those people who have made such profits through their exploitation of the public services that have been privatised actually pay their way in our economy. Why are we so hidebound in trying to resolve this economic crisis within the four-year time scale that the Government have set for us?
	What we are asking for now is a planned approach to our economy-no longer a casino economy, but an economy that serves the needs of our people. Rather than the current rush towards cuts and further privatisations, we need the creation of an economy that will enable the casino wheels to start spinning again. That is the debate that we should have had today, but instead we have had a surreal debate about a meaningless piece of legislation that will have no effect in the real world in terms of reassuring the markets in the long term, but will have a real effect in terms of cuts in public-
	 Debate interrupted (Programme Order, 10 January).
	 The Deputy Speaker put forthwith the Question already proposed from the Chair (Standing Order No. 83E), That the Bill be now read the Third time.